The Digital Home: Audio Video Foundation

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The connected home is expected to live up to a lot of expectations. Look at the entertainment center alone: You’ll want the highest-quality television. You’ll want to be able to watch it in any room. You’ll want to be able to play your digital music files, stored on any computer, through your supercharged home entertainment system. You’ll want to record television signals with a PVR (personal video recorder, aka DVR) and view the recordings from any TV you so desire. You’ll want to do it all easily, and without having to run wires down the hallway or through the ceiling.

The technology to do all of that is rapidly developing. Some of it’s in place, some of it’s brand-new, and some is but a dream. My utopian view of the AV portion of a digital home is this:

To be able to view any feed, be it from cable or satellite TV, a DVD player, a computer file on any computer in the house, a PVR, a VCR (are those things still around?) or anything else, on any display in the house, such as a PC monitor, an HDTV, an NTSC TV or the LED on my microwave.

Likewise, to be able to listen to any audio source, be it a CD, an MP3 or WMA file, a radio feed or anything else, on any speaker system in the house, including any PC multimedia speaker system or my home entertainment center.

To do all of that with ease and grace; to have it as simple as clicking a few icons in Windows or banging buttons on my remote control.

Is that so much to ask? In fact, it is. That kind of versatility is oft-dreamed of but as yet is unrealized. For now, you can do some of that. Here’s how.

TV and HDTV

If you look at the average living room, it’s set up as a sort of Mecca, with each chair or couch radiating from a focal point. The center of the home entertainment center, the glowing king of your audio-visual system, is the television. It’s through the powers of this mystical box–or panel, as the case may be–that you view movies, watch shows, check out stuff you taped or PVRed for later, and so on. You can even watch digital content from your computers’ hard drives on your TV using gear we’ll discuss a little later. In the meantime, for more information visit Buying Guide: HDTVs.<

For now, it’s time to concentrate on getting the ultimate TV experience. At the very least, that involves getting your hands on a digital source with surround audio, such as those offered by your local cable company and national satellite TV services like DirectTV and the Dish Network. Such systems offer any number of channels, sports packages, TV on-demand and other services.

Additional AV equipment that you might desire, such as a CD changer/jukebox and a VCR.

Of course, for the pinnacle of television quality, you’ll want a high-definition television (HDTV) system. You’ll need:

A high-definition-capable television

A high-definition television tuner, which may be built into the TV

HDTV content, including broadcast HDTV and that from cable and satellite systems.

Note that not all programs are broadcast in HDTV; high-def tuners will automatically play regular NTSC signals properly.

The best way to get high-quality digital and HDTV content on multiple televisions is to have the cable or satellite provider install a receiver for each TV. In many cases, you can get package deals that include cable or satellite receivers in multiple rooms. Each receiver will come with its own remote control, which will supersede your TV’s remote; in many instances the receiver remote also will be able to control your TV’s volume and other features. Most content packages include at least one PVR, be it a TiVo that comes with DirecTV or another brand. With the right system, you can share recorded shows with other units.

Sharing Digital Content

It never fails: You record a show with your PVR and, later, when you want to watch it, the kids are bogarting the TV watching “Spongebob Squarepants.” Fear not, as some technology lets you retrieve recorded content from other televisions.

For instance, the TiVo Series 2 DVR set-top box can do just that. With a TiVo Series2 DVR atop each television in your home, you can share recorded content throughout your house. It doesn’t matter where you recorded it; you can play it with any of your TiVo boxes. They can even be connected wirelessly.

For HDTV PVR sharing, the Scientific Atlanta Multi-Room DVR 8300HD will be an interesting system. The primary television system is fitted with a main unit, and secondary client units are situated at other televisions. The clients anywhere in the house then can display PVR content recorded on the main unit.

Another cool concept in digital content sharing is the wireless, Wi-Fi enabled DVD player such as the PC Gateway Connected DVD Player. Though it comes with some playback limitations, technology like this lets you swap content with PCs. Besides just playing DVDs, such devices let you grab photos, music and videos from your PC and enjoy them in any room in the house.

Convergence: PC Files on Your Home Entertainment Center

With the right hardware, you can enjoy all of the media files on your PC–such as your MP3 and WMA audio files, MPEG-1, -2 and -4 videos, Internet radio, JPEG digital photos and other content–on your home entertainment center. One way to do this is by adding a PC to your home theater, which was discussed in the last installment. There are other ways.

Share digital audio throughout the house with hubs such as the Turtle Beach AudioTron AT-100, a recent Editors’ Choice. It’s a stereo component that fits right in with your CD changer and your multichannel receiver, working with your home network to give your home theater access to Internet radio and the music files stored on your PC’s hard drive. The AudioTron has been around since before Wi-Fi took hold, so it’ll require a 10BASET network.

But why stop at audio? Media adapters such as the PRISMIQ let you enjoy video, music and photo files, stream Internet radio, and even browse the Web from your home entertainment system. 802.11a/b/g ready, this box sits near your entertainment system and communicates with your home computer network. You can use it to display content from all of the computers on your home network.

Sadly, the super-home-AV-network I envisioned at the beginning of this column isn’t possible, but we’re getting close. In a matter of years, you’ll be able to watch or listen to whatever you want whenever you want to on any display or speaker system in the house. Next, we’ll leave AV for a bit and talk about home automation from the comfort of your computer screen.

Joel Durham Jr. is a freelance writer and editor. He is also the gaming columnist for Microsoft’s Windows XP Expert Zone, and has written books on building and optimizing PCs, including a forthcoming Dummies title. Joel was the Senior Technical Editor for CNET’s Gamecenter, a casualty of the dot-com implosion. He has written hundreds of features, how-to’s, news articles, columns and reviews that focus on the technical side of PCs, specializing in multimedia and games. Joel lives in upstate New York with his wife and children.

More on the Digital Home: test greentech test Hands On with the HP Envy 13 and 15 DL.TV: DigitalLife 2007 Highlights The Human Side of DigitalLife  PCMag Radio: Gateway Launches iMac Killer more

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